The Dark Yakumo Saga
by The Carnivorous Muffin
Summary: A bored and desperate adult jonin Eru Lee, deprived of chunin apprentices and children, demands a new student to distract her from the tedium that is peacetime in Konoha. Yondaime hokage, Minato, coincidentally, has just been petitioned by the Kurama clan head to assign a tutor to the problematic clan heir. Side fic of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds"


**Author's Note: A few notes before you begin. one, this is a side fic to "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" and if you haven't read a good chunk of that you'll be very confused. Two, this is obviously NOT CANON for very obvious reasons.**

* * *

"Minato, please, none of this is my fault! I'm so bored and an empty nester and I need students!"

If Namikaze Minato, yondaime hokage, yellow flash, and bane of Iwa, was going to pick a moment in time for making the latest and greatest decision he regretted then it was his wife Eru Lee showing up in his office to whine yet again about a highly ranked mission gone terribly wrong.

Now, how and why she'd managed to steal a magical blue cube called a Tesseract from the Norse space Viking god of lies, Laufeyson Loki, who in turn had been attempting to steal it from a parallel Earth he'd invaded with hive mind shinobi from some hellish hidden village in the depths of another dimension in space, was entirely beyond Minato.

However, after the several interdimensional disasters from her own space-time division in ANBU, such as those that occurred during the hideously long chunin apprenticeship of Uchiha Obito (that had somehow turned him from Minato's worse student into an S-ranked machine of death) or her much shorter chunin apprenticeship with Uchiha Itachi (though slightly less destructive if only because Itachi didn't feed off of Lee's Leeness in the way Obito seemed to) Minato could hardly say he was surprised.

Lee set the ominously glowing cube on his desk, one that was leaking chakra at an alarming rate and gave Minato the ominous feeling that it was entirely more trouble than it was worth, as she looked him in the eye and further insisted her ridiculous point, "He was monologuing on live television in _Germany_ about how he was going to enslave mankind while wearing a golden helmet that looked like antlers! Minato, I couldn't let him think he could get away with it, it was entirely insulting plus giant global threat to humanity with an artifact of power that would have the _Nazis_ in any ' _Indiana Jones_ ' film salivating at the mouth. Plus, you should have seen the team they managed to assemble to try to kick the shit out of this guy."

Lee then crossed her arms, in full ranting and or justification of her latest mission disaster mode, as she explained the parallel Earth's strike team against enemy invaders, "There was this buff blonde guy who had enough chakra to be halfway decent, if his only skills didn't involve wearing blue spandex, throwing a shield, and having truly pitiful taijutsu abilities that vaguely resembled fisticuffs. For reference, he calls himself Captain _America_ , let me repeat that, the captain of their ANBU death squad (which is also called the Avengers, because why not) calls himself Captain _America_. Then you have this snarky nerd who really likes red and builds himself robot suits and computers but mostly just provides unnecessary nerdy commentary and tries to look cool. Oh, and then, then one of their insiders (whose only useful skill is shooting fancy arrows), went and got himself brainwashed and captured by space _Vikings_. They also have this ex- _Soviet_ quasi kunoichi who's not bad for having no bloody chakra at all, this other nerdy guy with the strange and alarming blood limit of turning into a mindless green rage monster, and then the _Norse_ space god of thunder. At any rate, none of these people clearly had any ability to defeat a mercenary space army, and so I had no choice but to take back the _Tesseract_ for them, throw Loki off a building, and give them my business card as well as the hefty bill for my S-ranked planet saving heroics."

Minato, not having been there himself, highly doubted that any of that needed to happen, or that they'd be paying Lee's bill. For that matter he now had a slight headache as he was wondering, yet again, if peace was over and he was going to find himself at war with either the Norse god Odin (who apparently also was a secret space Viking) or else someone who Lee so offended that she forgot even to mention them. And by himself, he of course meant Lee, as he threw her back out to whatever latest dimension she'd devastated to fix her own messes.

As it was though, with a glowing cube on his desk that would have to be sealed god even knew where, and Lee looking chagrinned, desperate, and defensive in front of him all he could really ask was, "How would students help this?"

Lee's head fell forward emotion practically pouring out of her as she summarized her plight in a few short sentences, "Oh come on, Minato, Obito's a fully functioning jonin with a real life now, Naruto, Hari, and San are still in the middle of the academy, Kakashi's a more or less fully functioning adult and jonin, Itachi has been an ANBU captain forever, and we've been at peace forever. I have nothing to do, I'm just… I'm just like the retired hokages."

Unfortunately, Lee was hardly wrong. She, Senju Hashirama, Senju Tobirama, and perhaps even the sandaime Sarutobi Hiruzen could go and join a club together of people who were so intimidating and so respected that any time they set foot outside of the village for anything other than pure diplomacy Minato would have some village screaming in his ear.

In fact, they kind of had joined a club, as Lee had recruited both the first and second ageless hokages into her space-time division and as far as Minato knew the division (mostly comprised of overpowered S-rank and A-ranked nerds who for whatever reason could rarely do anything else) had weekly Dungeons and Dragons games with Tobirama as the pragmatic, supreme, and intimidating Dungeon Master.

Still, the sandaime and now Minato had avoided giving Lee genin students for very pointed reasons. Not only was Lee a little too advanced for any genin student, even a truly gifted one, but the idea of Lee having that much influence over small children was…

Well, there was nothing wrong with Naruto, Hari, or San aside from the fact that both Minato and Lee turned out to be terrible at naming children. After Hari when Lee and Minato sat down and realized that their choices were either Kenobi after Star Wars, Menma after ramen, or else giving up and just naming the poor bastard Third, Minato had realized that if they did ever have a fourth child that maybe they should just give up and concoct some sort of a name picking lottery and just pick whatever winning name sounded the least ridiculous and was pronounceable by the English and their own fellow countrymen.

All the same, there was something inside Minato (or perhaps it was just Shikaku and Inoichi advising him) that made it seem like giving Lee control over children who were not at least a chunin or jonin was a bad idea.

Normally the meeting would have ended with him unsympathetically throwing the unfilled out paperwork in Lee's face and telling her to get to work already while he figured out a good place to store an object of unknown potential and think of how this latest and greatest mission affected Konoha's standing, but, unfortunately, someone had approached him earlier in the week with their own problem that was not mutually exclusive to his wife's.

Kurama Murakumo, head of the reclusive Kurama clan had only the week before petitioned Minato to grant his daughter and clan heir Kurama Yakumo a tutor so that she could develop into a proper ninja and future clan head. At six years old the girl had been too weak to perform the physical activities required even in the basic levels of the academy despite her reputed overwhelming talent in genjutsu with her clan's kekkei genkai. If she was to become a ninja at all, it would be through training in her own clan or else specialized teaching outside of the academy.

Now, there were two immediately obvious tutors he could send to the man. The first, the newly appointed jonin, Yuhi Kurenai and gifted genjutsu specialist, who not only had the specialties the clan would look for but also a calm demeanor and caring personality that Minato suspected would allow the woman to excel as a jonin sensei in the future. The second, of course, was Konoha's greatest genjutsu specialist, S-ranked terror, and bane of all nations in the elemental countries, Eru Lee who had debatably corrupted three of Konoha's current jonin elite past the point of no return.

Now, most of Minato's inner consciousness was screaming at him to just assign Kurenai already and be done with it. However, the other part of him said that assigning Lee had the added benefit of killing two birds with one stone and that if anyone could turn that poor girl into a shinobi it would be his wife. That, and, he suspected the only other solution to keeping Lee from conquering other dimensions in his and Konoha's name was to impregnate her again.

And even that, he suspected, would only barely slow her down if at all.

So, Minato decided to damn all the torpedoes and resign himself to whatever inevitable disaster followed, as he smiled across at Lee and said, "You know, it so happens, that I do have a teaching job for you."

* * *

"A student?" Obito, the faithless cad of an ex-student, nearly spit out his tea, "Sensei's giving you a genin student?"

"That's right," Lee grinned, pouring herself and Obito another glass as she motioned to herself and her inspirational glory, "You're looking at the new and improved inspirer of tiny children!"

They were sitting on the steps of the hokage manor, she and Obito doing their weekly catching up session, or as weekly as one could do when Obito wasn't off on some mission or Lee wasn't somewhere off in a different dimension in space.

Obito seemed entirely too dubious, the expressive half of his face furrowing to match the narrow eyed look of his scarred half as he said, "So, let me get this straight, you steal a _MacGuffin_ , singlehandedly stop an army of invading aliens, defenestrate a _Norse_ god, and sensei decides to finally reward you with the student you've been asking for ever since Itachi passed his jonin exams and ran as far away from you as physically possible?"

"It was not defenestration," Lee corrected with some irritation, "I threw him off a roof, not through a window. And Itachi did not run away, he subtly sauntered away from me in the opposite direction hoping not to be rude or else that I somehow wouldn't notice."

Which actually had been rather rude of Itachi since she'd really never wanted him as an apprentice in the first place. But when Fugaku whined to Minato about racism and favoritism and Lee having taken blood traitor Obito as an apprentice, and Minato told Lee to just do it, and Mikoto came for an intimidating visit, well, Lee had felt she'd had no choice…

As it was she mostly ended up feeling sort of bad for Itachi the whole time as it became clear that he had all the bloodlust of a serene monk and was clearly a pacifist. Either way, he was doing a good job now of faking it until he made it in the corps of ANBU. Lee just made sure Kakashi kept an eye on him and made sure he never snapped completely.

Obito seemed entirely unconvinced or even remotely distracted as he crossed his arms and gave Lee a rather pointed look with his mismatched eyes, "Alright, what's wrong with them?"

"There is nothing wrong with my new student!"

Obito just kept staring.

"Alright, so she might have crippling asthma or something and couldn't cut it in the academy and is technically nowhere close to being a genin," Lee said, "But I'm told she has great potential in genjutsu!"

Obito just kind of stared at her flatly then bluntly said as he sipped tea with a serenity he did not in any way deserve, "I can't believe sensei's assigning you instead of Yuhi Kurenai or even Itachi for that matter."

No faith, no respect, kids just were such brats these days (even if they were now twenty something year old brats versus cute fourteen-year-old brats with crippling fear of dark enclosed spaces). Lee glared over at him, "I'll have you know that I am almost as great as genjutsu as I am at ninjutsu, Obito!"

Obito held up his hands in mock defense, "Shishou, I'm just saying, if sensei wanted a genjutsu specialist to go inspiring the next generation of children, he didn't have to go to you."

"You'll see, I will turn this asthmatic future student of mine into the greatest kunoichi the world has ever seen!" Lee said, and then rethought that sentence and added, "You know, except for me, she will never be that great and or terrifying."

And that conversation and Obito's complete lack of faith in Lee's teaching abilities (which was also rather rude as Lee had taught him for years) served as the fiery inspiration as Lee knocked on the door of the Kurama compound. It was a quiet out of the way place, an alarming distance from the village center, in the fold of the mountains that surrounded the village. There was an air of age and serenity to the place, making it easy to imagine that this was one of the few founding clans of Konoha, if one that had dwindled through the years as the Hatake clan had.

The door opened revealing a rather stoic man who Lee assumed must be the clan head Kurama Murakumo himself, "Hello, the yondaime sent me to train your daughter and…"

He just nodded, pleased with Minato's choice apparently, and then motioned for her to follow him, "This way."

"Oh, well, alright," Lee said, following him in, through the many rooms until they stepped into a back one where the girl waited. She was a small pale thing, light long brown hair with a single braid on one side, light brown eyes, and a pink kimono and violet baggy pants which overwhelmed her tiny frame.

The man then bowed and quickly exited the room, "Do your best, Eru-sama."

"Wait, what, you're leaving already?" Lee asked, but he apparently was, because the sliding door shut and then it was just Lee and the tiny girl. Now, Lee did have experience with small children, she had children of her own after all, and Itachi hadn't been too much older than this girl when he'd been thrust into Lee's tender care, but all the same she had this sudden feeling of being a fish out of water as she looked up at the little girl's hopeful eyes.

"So, I'm Eru Lee, I'm so intimidating that I make armies of A-ranked jonin cry and am not really allowed to take missions anymore," Lee said introducing herself as she sat at the table, "I also am great at genjutsu so the hokage and you father sent me to tutor you."

The girl flushed, then nodded, and quietly said, "I'm, um, Kurama Yakumo and…"

The flush became brighter, her eyes flooded with tears, and she broke down crying in front of Lee as she declared, "And I don't care if I'm weak, I really want to be a ninja and I know I can do it and…"

Lee grabbed onto her shoulders, smiling, hoping this would be enough to stop the crocodile tears before they got started, "Well, that is why Minato sent me, isn't it?"

And that seemed enough to light the will of fire and the fires of hopes in her eyes and the tears, thankfully stopped, replaced instead by a large and hopeful grin that neither Obito nor Itachi had ever directed at Lee.

Lee, suddenly, felt very warm and fuzzy inside.

Lee squeezed the girl's cheeks in her hands, "Oh, you are so cute, I swear on my honor I will turn you into a death machine."

* * *

"Alright, Yakumo, after two days and more than two asthma attacks, I have concluded that taijutsu and ninjutsu are not going to be your friends," Lee announced to her new and almost eerily devoted student Kurama Yakumo. Yakumo looked up with those big brown eyes, biting her lip and trying not to hold back tears as Lee so casually confirmed her greatest fears.

"However, that said, your genjutsu is so good it's actively alarming," Lee said, which was the understatement of the century. Granted, Lee wasn't entirely sure why the girl relied on painting as a crutch and conduit for her genjutsu, but damn did it work.

It didn't quite warp reality, but it got close enough to be truly frightening, appearing to have a wide area effect to convince the whole village that whatever was happening in her paintings was reality. More, to reflect any physical changes on the victims, from injury to mere incapacitation, to happen to them in reality as well.

Point being, the girl did have quite the potential.

"With that, I have brought for you inspiration and a path forward in the form of exhibit a, that weird jonin sensei Maito Gai and his genin students, specifically his student Lee Rock," Lee then produced out of nowhere several photographs of Kakashi's weird and alarming green spandex wearing, busy eyebrowed, bowl cut, winning smiler and taijutsu and genjutsu specialist Maito Gai and his adorable genin students the unamused prodigy Hyuga Neiji, the budding weapons and fuinjutsu specialist Tenten, and of course the taijutsu specialist and all around Maito Gai clone Lee Rock.

On seeing the photos wide and sparkly eyed Kurama Yakumo inched closer to hover over them while Lee explained, "Now, as you probably don't know, Lee Rock was considered something of a lost cause in the academy. Due to malformed chakra coils he lacked any ability to use genjutsu or ninjutsu, however, instead of giving up and resigning himself to civilian life he instead decided to imitate Balboa Rocky and train himself half to death. Instead of killing himself like half of his academy teachers predicted, he became so impressive at taijutsu that he passed the academy exam and then was even taken on as a student by the very inspired Maito Gai who then in turn inspired Lee Rock to have no taste in fashion whatsoever."

"So, you mean, he could become a great ninja without two of the academy three?" Yakumo asked, apparently cluing into what Lee was getting at.

"That's right," Lee said with her own grin then pointed to the little girl, "And given that you're so powerful that just by sitting and painting you can effectively warp reality I say that you have more than a fair shot."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that given that reality is what is perceived, that we in fact have no true means of telling if we're in some genjutsu cast by a cruel and fickle god already, then if you cast a genjutsu strong enough you can change the world itself," that might be a tad philosophical for your average six-year-old, but the girl at least seemed to get the idea as she nodded with reverence.

"Still, it'd be nice if you could run at least a mile without collapsing in despair and physical exhaustion, so we're going to work on that first."

Now, the girl paling and her look of dawning horror, was a familiar one that Lee had seen on both Obito and Itachi's faces more than once during their chunin apprenticeship. Still, all the same, a little terror and fearful respect for authority was good for the soul.

* * *

"So, how's the training going?" Obito asked after a month or so of Lee's training of Kurama Yakumo, and you'd think, after all that time, Lee would have some sort of legitimate answer to that question.

However, the best Lee could up with was, "Well, you know, it's going."

The girl didn't lack drive, that was one thing, and inspiring her with the inspirational and heartwarming story of Lee Rock really had motivated her far more than even Lee could have predicted.

Plus, in a way, the girl was better suited than Gai's tiny clone. If she could learn to cast genjutsus fast enough and stop relying on paintings then she could merely convince any enemy that she was kicking the shit out of them or else even killing them and she wouldn't have to lift a finger.

So, it didn't really matter that she couldn't run a lap, couldn't block a punch, and couldn't get leaves to stick to her own skin.

"Going, why does that not sound like it's going well?" Obito asked drily, in a way that made Lee suspect he had expected her to totally fail at this and have to ask for either Itachi's or even this newly minted jonin Yuhi Kurenai's help.

That, and the fact that he'd chosen to meet inside a fancy restaurant without Minato invited along rather than just at Lee's house or the Hatake compound made Lee suspect that this was a pity dinner designed to make her feel better after everything had presumably blown up in Lee's face.

A pessimistic thought that Lee did not appreciate.

"It's going fine," Lee said with confidence, before relenting and adding, "Well, it's going mostly fine."

"And that's supposed to mean what?" Obito pressed.

Lee paused, tried to think of a decent way to put this, and then said, "You remember that terrible live action _X-Men 3_ movie where Gray Jean has this evil personality inside her brain in control of most of her terrifying powers and also really wants in Wolverine's pants called Dark Phoenix?"

Obito's eyebrows raised up towards his hairline as he just gave her this disbelieving and astounded look, "Yes?"

Lee just decided to blurt it all at once, "Well, cute little Kurama Yakumo has a Dark Phoenix… I call it Id."

Obito didn't say anything for a moment, just slowly took a drink of tea, then asked, "She has a multiple separate evil personality in control of her power that you call Id."

"It likes to burn things," Lee added, "And I think it has either the goal of world domination, destroying all of humanity, or at least destroying Konoha itself."

Now, Lee at this point had only seen Dark Phoenix Id manifest once or twice, but the look of rage on the normally adorable girl's face as well as the vast illusions of pain and terror that she had started which Lee then had to clean up well…

And the trouble was that the more Lee trained the girl the more of an arsenal she gave to Id and while Lee herself was certainly more powerful that didn't mean she found the idea of providing her newest student the means of destroying Konoha singlehandedly to be a good idea.

As a result, for the past two weeks they'd been working on meditation, summoning the power of love and friendship, and talking about their repressed feelings and desires. And if that didn't work then Lee hoped that maybe trying to steer the girl's dark desires in a more palatable direction would work out.

"And you've told sensei this?"

"… It's in the report," granted, Lee might have buried it beneath other less important details that Minato would undoubtedly ignore while he was still grappling with the Tesseract problem, but it was still technically in there.

"Shishou!" Obito said, slamming his hand on the table, "Goddammit, you are not turning our lives into _X-Men 3_!"

"Hey, I am trying very hard not to!" Lee said, "And I've only been her tutor for a month so give me some credit in even figuring out that this was a thing!"

Obito was unimpressed and apparently was returning to his role as the responsible straight man in their comic duo, "Shishou, so help me god, you will tell sensei and you will get Shisui to fix this mess before it starts!"

"Shisui?!" Lee asked, concluding that Obito undoubtedly was talking about the boy's mangekyo sharingan with the terrifying ability to warp people's memories and perceptions past the point of any remembering, "Isn't that a little extreme?!"

"I don't know, shishou," Obito said impatiently, "Isn't allowing a little girl with a psychotic second personality run around with the ability to kill us all a little extreme?"

"No, no, Obito," Lee said impatiently, "You're looking at this all wrong."

"Oh, am I?" he asked in that rhetorical manner that he thought Lee herself had the absolutely wrong idea concerning all of this.

"We just have to guide her dark, suppressed, consciousness in a healthier direction like burning and slaughtering our enemies rather than our friends and families," Lee said, "It will be totally fine, there's no need for extreme measures like sharingan induced brainwashing."

Obito looked entirely unimpressed by his former master's brilliance as he said, "Shishou, you can do whatever you want, I'm telling sensei."

He then motioned for the check, put down his half, and gave a final nod and smile towards Lee as he walked off oh so casually in the direction of the hokage tower.

"Oh, you son of a bitch, Obito!" Lee yelled at his retreating figure, "I am a responsible adult and teacher who can fix things like this! You hear me, Obito?! I can handle this!"

But apparently Lee had a few days if not a few hours if Minato was really on top of the ball, to fix this, so with that she slammed down her own bills and teleported to the Kurama compound and Yakumo's bedroom.

Yakumo shot out of bed in terror, pressing against the wall and then blinking as she realized it was Lee, but then shot straight back into terror as Lee's hands fell upon her shoulders and her brown eyes met Lee's glowing green.

"Yakumo, it's me, we have hours of intense and questionable psychotherapy to do if you want to avoid some truly severe consequences."

* * *

"And so that's how I turned my cute little student into a machine of war and death against our enemies rather than our friends," Lee explained to Thor, god of thunder, Loki, god of being a dick to everybody, and Foster Jane, some astrophysicist crack pot they'd picked up in the middle of the desert, all while they watched cute little Kurama Yakumo paint the gruesome death of the straggling army of dark elves who until a moment before had been set on wiping out all sentient life in the universe.

In other words, an excellent cause to let Yakumo let loose her destructive urges.

"Thanks, sensei!" Yakumo said cheerfully, either enjoying the bitter winds and darkness of this alien world or else the contorted corpses around her entirely too much.

"You see, the trick was to convince Id that he and or she couldn't possibly overcome me, Minato, the entire Uchiha clan, and more," Lee cheerfully pointed out to her companions, "But instead to rationally point out that if he and or she allowed Yakumo become a Konoha shinobi then Yakumo could invade alternate dimensions and delight in the blood of more enemies than she'd ever know what to do with and light everything she could ever want on fire without getting shanked by hunter nin and or sealed away by Shisui," Lee explained further with delight at her own ingeniousness, that had been enough to get Minato to compromise and say that Yakumo had one strike before Shisui was showing up at her door.

At that moment Yakumo added yet another spike in her painting through head pale dark elf's body, causing him to cry out and contort further on the ground, eyes rolling back in his head as he grew closer and closer to death.

Whether Thor, his adopted brother, and plain Jane were impressed speechless by Lee's awesome teaching methods, or else horrified, was entirely beyond Lee. But undoubtedly, just like in New York with the blue cube of doom, they'd thank her eventually.

Except for maybe Loki who was still edging away from her and giving her bitter glances when he thought she didn't notice.

"Also, I still think you all are entirely lame, incompetent, and clearly would be in such deep shit without my help," Lee pointed out with a grin, and then, at their murderous looks of gratitude said, "You're welcome!"

Then, eyeing Loki, she added, "And I can't believe they let you out of space prison."

* * *

 **Author's Note: And this is a technically crossover, because why not? Written for the 2000th review of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" by Greatazuredragon who asked for a fic where Lee takes Yakumo Karuma as an apprentice and hilarity, and chaos, ensues. Although note that even more than usual, I have no idea who this person was so this was entirely based on wiki reading. Blame any age issues on that.**

 **Thanks for reading, reviews are much appreciated.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, Harry Potter, or the brief flashes of the MCU that showed up in this.**


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